I teach at a Lutheran seminary. The stairwell up to my office has a spooky death mask of Martin Luther mounted on the wall in a glass case. You should know: my theological tradition isn’t known for touchy-feely ideas such as attributing spirituality to animals. We’re not Saint Francis folks; we’re Martin Luther and John Calvin folks. The Reformation that Luther and Calvin led was a rebellion, for sure, but one that emphasized order, personal responsibility, and discipline. We’re not called the Frozen Chosen for nothing.

However, it’s also true that Luther himself was a known dog lover. Once, he told of receiving a letter from a friend describing how a dog “pooped in the grave of the Bishop of Halle,” which prompted Luther to tell his own story of a formal processional with banners around a Catholic church. When the verger set the pot of holy water down on the ground, a local dog approached the processional, lifted his leg, and began peeing into the pot. The priest, who had been in the act of sprinkling the water, bellowed, “You impious dog! Have you become a Lutheran too?!?”1

If Luther had had a Facebook profile, along with posts about the hypocrisy of popes and the delights of drinking beer, his Timeline would have revolved around his dog, Tölpel. He loved spending time with Tölpel, expressing to his friends that he wished he could pray with the same concentration with which the dog begged his master for meat. Luther, whose theology saw God not in the pomp and circumstance of the religious, but in the humble and lowly, said, “The dog is a very faithful animal and is held in high esteem…Our Lord God has made the best gifts the most common.”

We know that dogs seek to communicate with us, but is it insane, is Luther drunk, to think there is a spiritual dimension or potential to this? Can something so common as a household dog draw us into the spiritual? Could it be that in these common four-legged creatures, God has given us a beautiful gift that’s meant to encourage our highest forms of spiritual longing?

We usually think of spirituality or the soul as being defined by the ability to make rational choices, to believe in something beyond yourself (or anything at all); this is the legacy of Luther and Calvin’s Reformation. But what does that mean for dogs, when they can’t hold theological beliefs, choose to be Lutheran, or make a conscious ironic theological statement for the priest or verger (or deceased Bishop of Halle) to interpret?

Hare’s studies prove that dogs are able to attune to us with amazing skill, reading us and desiring to be with us. It was interesting science—and I could tell Owen that Kirby was amazing at reading him—but so what? This doesn’t necessarily prove that they were friends. It doesn’t explain why losing him devastated me so much. It doesn’t name the inexplicable quality beyond the natural or material that seemed to be present in our relationship with Kirby. And I’m not about to assert that a Goldendoodle could believe in substitutionary atonement or God’s providence.

So, what does gesture reading and our dogs’ long looks into our faces have to do with spirituality? How do they echo the core theological commitment that God comes to us in and through relationships that are face-to-face? A lot, actually.2

The Core of the Spiritual

Spirituality, or spirit, or even soul, is often assumed to be some kind of ethereal, invisible thing inside us. We assume it is like the Force in Star Wars, some supernatural power that gives us wisdom like Yoda’s and magic like Obi-Wan’s. I suppose in some ways this is true, but spirituality can also be seen as an awareness of something that transcends you—a relationship with something that is beyond you. Particularly in the Christian and Jewish traditions, a spiritual connection is a deep sense of sharing in the life of another person, whether it’s God, your spouse, or a close friend. This sharing of life is so deep and beautiful that we often call it love.

The Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas claims that humans are infinite spirit—but not through a disembodied substance hidden in our chests, as Descartes believed when he took his poor wife’s little dog and cut it open looking for the gland that contained the soul. (Spoiler alert: he never found it!) Rather, Levinas asserts that the spirit or soul is experienced through our faces, which invite us to share in one another’s being. The human infant can read gestures early on because the infant is uniquely drawn to the face of her caregiver, and the caregiver cannot take her eyes off the face of the baby.3 It is seeing and responding to this deep need for connection, offered through the face of another, that makes us spiritual.4

Levinas noticed, while in a prisoner-of-war camp, that encountering the face of another seemed to place a particular call on a human. It led us beyond ourselves, to suffer with others, to protect them. To cage and destroy human beings was a way to say, “Your face (being) doesn’t matter, and I don’t need to see it.”

A friend recently shared with me the story of his grandfather, who is suffering from severe dementia. In the midst of this crippling disease, his wife of forty years died. At the time of her death, he could not remember her, but after three weeks of her being gone, he said to my friend, “I am missing a face that I can’t remember.”

One reason I believe humans are spiritual beings is because, as a species and as individuals, we are compelled to reach for transcendence—to seek (I believe) an experience of God in art, in worship, in nature, and in the company of our neighbor. In the Christian traditions, to be “made in God’s image” is to be made for the purpose of knowing others and being known. It is this innate draw that causes us to read the faces of others, from our first days, reminding us that we are more than animal, vegetable, or mineral. For me, the best word to describe this capacity is spirituality.5

If face-to-face encounter is a doorway into the spiritual, it makes good sense that we feel a spiritual connection to our dogs. To have a dog joyfully pant at the window when your car pulls into the driveway, or follow you around as you make your morning coffee, or look up into your eyes before laying her head on your lap, is to feel seen and connected to another. Yet what, exactly, is the purpose of this connection?

What’s the Motive?

To read others and connect deeply is a beautiful and powerful thing, but this capacity doesn’t mean that every relationship we have is spiritual, or even productive. Sometimes people connect with us to hurt us, to deceive us, to use our spiritual capacities in some way against us. While my friend the theology professor was wrong about dogs being mindless, perhaps he was right that they are just con artists. Are dogs like the handsome, gold-digging hunk who woos the older woman with his sensitivity and openness only to gain access to her bank account?

It’s very clear that dogs are able to attune to our personal frequency, but if this is truly spiritual, then it has to be deeper than just tuning into us. What is their motive? If they’ve merely found a way to connect to us for their own reasons, for survival or for gain, then it doesn’t seem mutual, transcendent, or spiritual. Do they really want to be with us for the sake of being with us? Do they enjoy our presence and seek experiences that don’t necessarily benefit them functionally? In other words, are dogs smart enough simply to exploit our spiritual proclivities, or are dogs actually part of our spiritual connection with God and others? Is this experience somehow mutual, a two-way street? Dogs seek our faces and read our gestures, and this pulls deeply at the spiritual cords of our being. We feel drawn toward the experience of transcendence, but does the dog?

It was to these questions that my search now turned.